I feel the need..

I've done a bit of motorway driving this last week and one thing that I had thought about in the past was even more apparent.

As I was in the overtaking lane, I noticed that actually 70% of the cars on the road in front of me were in the overtaking lane and there was the odd car in the middle lane going at exactly the speed limit and some trucks and other cars on the inside lane travelling at around 60-70mph.

The cars in the overtaking lane were doing around 90 miles per hour but these days most people do that. Would it not be more safe to simply increase the speed limit on motorways instead of funneling most of the traffic down one high speed lane?

After all, danger comes when there is a high difference in speed between the fastest and the slowest. If everyone drove at the same speed, be it 20 mph or 200 mph, then provided the cars were safe enough, the roads were in good condition and the drivers were competent there shouldn't be many crashes at all.

Personally I don't really think speed accounts for many incidents on motorways anyway. If you see the serious ones in the news, it often involves either a truck, an old lady driving the wrong way, a drunk or someone that falls asleep.

Ultimate Speed Camera

It's been shown many times that speed (or "safety" as they like to call them) cameras are not effective at reducing accidents and it's common knowledge that these cameras serve only to extract more money from the motorist by enforcing archaic speed limits.

You can understand it: it's free money for them. Sure, a bit of investment in the cameras, support and staffing but from then on it's ding 60 quid here, ding 95 quid here if they decide to take the driving course instead of the 3 penalty points on the licence. Easy.

Apparently they are going to start reducing speed limits on country roads which historically have been national speed limit (I think this is 60 mph on a single carriageway).

The problem I have with these cameras is that they were touted as being placed only in accident black spots - the implication being that they reduced injuries and fatalities caused by speeding motorists. I'm all for that if that is the reason.

The problem is that most of the ones I see are placed in places with no schools, no shops and no houses nearby and in many cases they slyly reduce the speed limit so people don't realise they are speeding and get themselves caught by a camera. For example on wide dual carriageways leading up to motorways.

What defines an accident black spot? This is a question I wrote in a letter to the local newspaper a few years ago in response to an article detailing the placement of a speed camera near my house. The residents of a house outside which the camera was placed understandably did not want the camera outside their home. My letter was published, however no responses were drawn from the moronic do-gooders at the 'Road Safety Partnership'.

I can think of loads of speed cameras nearby but these places are hardly black spots. I do know, though, that it was common to exceed the speed limit in these areas.

Taking another angle on it, if someone gets run over whose fault is it? In almost all cases the motorist ends up getting shafted, but lately almost all of the cyclists I have seen have had no lights on their bike. I have seen gangs of teenagers walking down the middle of the road deliberately to antagonise motorists. They tend to swagger along and move out of the way only at the last minute unless you stop, in which case they make abusive gestures at you.

I quite often see dogs that run out into the road on those extensible dog leads because the owner is on some different planet and doesn't restrict it. I always worry when I see parents walking along with kids that must be about 3 years old and they let the kid walk along the kerb without holding their hand. Are people that fucking stupid?

A motorist can be driving any speed and if someone be it child, or dog, or teenager runs into the road then it's quite likely that when colliding with a 1.5 ton lump of metal there will be injury whether the driver is driving at the speed limit or 3 miles per hour above it. But as always given all of the above examples the motorist ends up drawing the short straw.

There is also the factor of the drunk, uninsured, banned driver. It drives me mad that courts seem to think that banning a driver means they definitely wont be on the roads and there have been loads of cases where someone that is banned has got straight back behind the wheel and run someone over. No speed cameras or speed limits will ever change that.

Pressure groups like the Road Safety Partnership just love to blanket as many incidents as possible speed related because it feeds their own purpose and pays their wages: the reality is that crap drivers will always be crap drivers and idiots will always be idiots no matter the speed cameras, traffic calming measures, or whatever.

The best way to solve accident blackspots are to make them non-blackspots. Change the road design, add more saftey railings or pedestrian crossings. Encourage pedestrians to realise they have a responsibility for safety as well.

The Police must realise that people slow down for cameras and then speed up again provided the flow of traffic permits it. This is why they often position a mobile camera just after the fixed GATSO camera: to catch people speeding up again.

Speed cameras are unhelpful and frustrate motorists. The facts show clearly that they have made no impact on the number of fatalities on the road. In some cases, where they are hidden and may appear suddenly in the viewpoint of the driver causing him or her to slam the brakes on, it could be argued that they are dangerous too.

The ultimate form of speed camera would be one that could detect bad or erratic driving, drunk driving and so on however this probably wont ever be invented. The next best thing is to hit bad drivers hard with some jail time. This wont happen either.

I guess we are stuck with the draconian, unforgiving form of speed enforcement for now. I'm just surprised there aren't any vigilante groups going round spraying the lenses so they don't work!

Cop out

I drove over to Leeds this weekend to visit Mike. On previous visits I have travelled on the A59 from Preston through past Skipton, through Ilkley and into the north of Leeds which is where Mike lives. It's a nice run through rural areas which can sometimes get busy around Ilkley but usually it's not too much of a slowdown. However this weekend I decided to go on the M62 for a change.

Making good progress on the quiet motorways I was travelling slightly above the speed limit but not excessively so - and certainly not dangerously. Having had one crash 10 years ago I gave up the aggressive boy racer thing as soon as I saw how much my insurance premium went up!

When I joined the M62 there were a few packs of cars which I passed. All of them were exceeding the speed limit, and I was not doing more than about 90MPH for the few seconds it took to pass them. Following this I slotted into the middle lane and cruised at around 80MPH which was about the same speed as all the other traffic behind me. The road ahead was clear, the weather was fine, there were no unusual circumstances. It's nothing I haven't done a million times before.

But one thing was different. On previous journeys on the motorway I have been in an inconspicuous dark metallic green Ford Escort 1.6. A nice car that served me well for 7 years. This time I was in my bright orange Nissan 350Z. And this time a Police X5 BMW came hammering it up in my mirrors. His lights were not flashing but I had spotted him in my mirrors very early as he accelerated past all the cars that I had just passed. I had obviously heard all the stories about Police picking on certain cars for whatever reasons and it was in the back of my mind that I was about to be stopped by this guy. I'd also heard all the stories about BMW drivers! After swerving in behind me he proceeded to tailgate me for about half a mile whilst I'm sat there - still doing around 80MPH - expecting the blues and twos to come on and the resulting patronising castration for driving "dangerously" in a straight line at 80MPH and the accompanying penalty points.

Still behind me, the Police cruiser moved into the inside lane and I thought perhaps that was the end of it. But then suddenly and without signalling he proceeded to cut across all three lanes into the overtaking lane, accelerate past me and cut right in front of me. Then he slammed his brakes on.

Prior to the arrival of this Police vehicle the traffic was moving smoothly and progressively. As any motorway driver will know, as soon as a Police vehicle or a speed camera is spotted by someone the anchors come slamming on to bring everyone to bang on the speed limit. I didn't do that. I don't think slamming brakes on at high speed is a safe thing to do unless there is no other option. As a result the Police decided to cause me to do it by cutting me up and hitting the brakes.

I appreciate that I didn't get any punishment for exceeding the speed limit from this so the officer in question must have had one or two caring bones in his body but did this officer think that he was promoting safe driving by cutting me up and then hitting the brakes at 80MPH?

Did he really believe that targetting the relatively young driver with the performance car that was not driving erratically, not swerving and not tailgating anyone but committing the apparently heinous crime of driving 10MPH above the speed limit would really make a difference to anything, ever, except my insurance premiums? I prefer to drive with the flow of traffic rather than to be a blockage that causes people to have to brake or make maneuvres. If everyone drove at the same speed there would be far less accidents. Indeed, the Police obviously agree with that to a degree after slapping that old lady with a driving ban last week for driving at 10mph on the motorway she turned on to by mistake.

I just don't see why the Police have the right to drive at such high speeds when patrolling: furthermore I don't see why they do it. People already hate the Police. You would think they would want to improve their reputation (in fairness the guy that harassed me did this slightly by not stopping me, but spoiled it by driving like an idiot and trying to cause a crash). There is an inherent hesitation when it comes to the Police nowadays as there have been so many incidents of ridiculous inflexible traffic law enforcement, sneaky speed cameras placed not in accident spots but in money making spots and so on. This can even be extended to other forms of Police enforcement or lack of: victims of crime being prosecuted for retaliating against intruders or attackers, or the fact that the Police never come quickly for real crime that really matters to people such as burglary - unless you tell them you have killed the burglar and within 5 minutes the helicopter is above your house.

But back to motoring, having experienced what I did yesterday I can see why so many people die each year due to either their vehicle or their person being hit by Police vehicles doing stupid maneuvres at ridiculous speeds. Yet what do we see in the media an awful lot lately? Police wasting thousands of pounds of resources chasing up joyriders that film themselves speeding on Youtube to issue them with a pathetic slap on the wrists and penalty points that mean nothing to people that drive with no license or insurance anyway - if you aren't going to jail them then what's the point? Police drivers going to court for driving over 150MPH and getting off. Chief Constables getting caught on speed cameras and getting off. They always bleat about being trained to drive fast and therefore there's less risk but what level of skill does it take to drive at 80MPH in a relatively straight line with no obstacles? None more than to drive at 70MPH.

Why is it so difficult for the Police to realise that Gordon Brown and his tax loving Government are more than capable of persecuting motorists without their assistance?